About historic Sleepy Hollow and its environs…

Tag: Pocantico Hills

The solitary figure in an austere landscape is the emblem of Rockwell Kent’s rugged individualism. Kent’s work is homage to the mystic power and beauty found in both man and nature. The “elemental” reigned supreme in the artist’s view of life, nature, and his art. One familiar example of this theme is the bookplate he designed for the Warner Library about 1947. A man stands, book in hand, near the crest of a hill; the wide Tappan Zee and the hills of Nyack lie in the background. This image and Kent’s distinctive artistic style were etched into my memory from the time I first borrowed a book from the Warner Library as a young child. As I recall, there was a time when Kent’s bookplate was pasted into the endpaper of nearly every book in the library.

The scenes of Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown are no match for the stark drama of Tierra del Fuego, Alaska, Newfoundland, and Greenland, which fills much of Kent’s work, but these Hudson Valley hills served as the artist’s spiritual incubator. The man was a set of contradictions, a sociable introvert, a cantankerous sentimentalist, a mix of Victorian formality and radical non-conformity, an avowed socialist whose patrons included corporations and the wealthy. This strange mix would lead to a kind of artistic and political rejection during his lifetime; some might call it a suicide, others a crucifixion.

I wrote this article about Sleepy Hollow resident Tony Morabito in 2009. Tony passed away in September 2014. I will always remember him fondly as a Sleepy Hollow/North Tarrytown orginal.

It was the late 1950s. A lone horseman rode the trails of the Rockefeller estate near Eagle Mountain, a part of the Rockefeller Preserve. A lone archer emerged from the woods dressed in a plaid shirt and dungarees. The rider brought his horse to a halt.